{"id":66695,"date":"2019-08-21T16:53:38","date_gmt":"2019-08-21T22:53:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/ksut-joins-with-dream-warriors-to-connect-tribal-youth-to-the-arts\/"},"modified":"2019-08-21T22:53:38","modified_gmt":"2019-08-21T22:53:38","slug":"ksut-joins-with-dream-warriors-to-connect-tribal-youth-to-the-arts","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/ksut-joins-with-dream-warriors-to-connect-tribal-youth-to-the-arts\/","title":{"rendered":"KSUT joins with Dream Warriors to connect tribal youth to the arts"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

<\/p>\n

IGNACIO \u2013 On Monday, KSUT public radio started the first \u201cAwakening the Warrior Within\u201d program in Ignacio, connecting local Native American youth to hip-hop artists, singers and spoken word poets.<\/p>\n

The Dream Warriors<\/a>, a collective of five indigenous, nationally recognized performers, led the five-day program, focused on skill-building, artistry and empowerment. The program, funded through a Colorado Health Foundation Grant, includes three performances by the artists and daily activities for participants. The third concert is at 8 p.m. Friday at The Garage in Durango.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat I\u2019ve seen is just this incredible interest and innovative work happening in Indian County amongst youth, and I feel like KSUT is so well positioned to be a part of supporting that,\u201d said Tami Graham, the station\u2019s executive director.<\/p>\n

The program is a step toward the Native American multimedia training center that KSUT will launch once the station moves into its new, larger building in 2020.<\/a><\/p>\n

The Dream Warriors have traveled around the United States performing, running workshops and teaching empowerment and professional skills since 2015. In Ignacio, they led prayers and icebreaker, free-writing and skill-building activities for up to 15 youth participants. They also taught young artists about songwriting, beatboxing, recording, filmmaking and more.<\/p>\n

One standout moment for the artists was when one of the children rhymed during a free-writing exercise when he was talking about kids seeing parents struggle with addiction and the fear it creates \u2013 illustrating a high level of musicality on a complex subject, they said.<\/p>\n

\u201cAt the end, it was really cool because everyone shared a word about how they felt, and all the kids said they felt excited, inspired, good and happy,\u201d said Tanaya Winder, a poet and spoken word performer of the Southern Ute, Duckwater Shoshone and Pyramid Lake Paiute nations.<\/p>\n

\u201cOne kid said, \u2018I have something to do now,\u2019 which I think is important,\u201d said Lyla June, a poet, hip-hop artist and singer-songwriter of Din\u00e9 (Navajo) and Cheyenne lineage.<\/p>\n

Graham and Winder began talking about doing a program for Native American youth in Ignacio even before Graham applied for grants. Graham chose the Colorado Health Foundation grant because it included an opportunity to focus on social determinants of health, ideal for the \u201cAwakening the Warrior Within\u201d program with the Dream Warriors.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey take a real look at what\u2019s going on in their communities,\u201d Graham said. \u201cThey\u2019re so inspiring; for anybody, but imagine, especially as a Native American youth.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Dream Warriors themselves said their artistry has helped them develop goals, express positivity and find healing.<\/p>\n

June said one important lesson for the young artists is about unlearning the Euro-centric, mainstream media focus on wealth and returning to the indigenous focus on community.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe help the young people understand that you can write music to heal your community instead of to get rich and famous,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

For Wake Self, a hip-hip artist of Mescalero Apache, Aztec and Mexican lineage, music has been a source of community and self-expression.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think that being able to understand that you\u2019re unique is so important, and I think art and music does that,\u201d Wake Self said. \u201cThen also being able to understand that you\u2019re not alone in the things that you go through.\u201d<\/p>\n

smullane@durangoherald.com<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

to empower teens to find their voices<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":66696,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[28,1235,561,2196],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-66695","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-headlines","tag-ignacio","tag-native-american","tag-radio"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/66695","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=66695"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/66695\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/66696"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=66695"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=66695"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=66695"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=66695"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}